Retaining my Citi ThankYou Premier

I’ll be on vacation until January 6th. Until then, I’ll publish a series of “mini posts” with an occasional regular post if something interesting comes up. I may or may not answer blog comments or emails during this time. Thanks for understanding!

Recently, the annual fee for my Citi ThankYou Premier card came due. $125. Ouch. The Premier card is a good one to have if you have a lot of ThankYou points, which I do. With the Premier card, each point is worth 1.25 cents towards airfare. The much more expensive Prestige card offers slightly better 1.33 cents per point, but that’s another story… Without one of these premium cards, ThankYou points are worth, at best, 1 cent each.

So, I like the improved redemption value given by the Premier card, but I don’t like the annual fee. I called to cancel. I figured that if I cancelled the card, I could easily sign up my wife for the card so that she would get get a sign-up bonus and the first year free, and we’d still be able to book flights with ThankYou points for 1.25 cents per point. Fortunately, ThankYou points can be transferred at no cost from one person to another (but they must be used within 90 days of transfer).

My call went something like this:

Me: I’d like to cancel my account

Rep: I see that you have XXX,XXX ThankYou points. Would you like to downgrade to the no annual fee ThankYou Preferred card so that you can keep your points?

Me: No, thank you. I already have the Preferred card.

Rep: I see. Would you like me to conference in a ThankYou representative to find out how many of your existing ThankYou points were earned with the Premier card since those points would go away if you cancel?

Me: No, thank you.

Rep: Since you’ve been an outstanding customer and have had this card for two years, we can offer to refund your annual fee if you spend $4500 in 3 months with this card. Would you be interested in this offer?

Me: Hmmm, let me think about that. Are there any other offers available?

Rep: Yes, if $4500 is too much to spend, we can offer you $75 credit after spending just $1000 on the card.

Me: Hmmm, let me think about that. Are there any other offers available?

Rep: Yes, [he described the next offer]

Me: Hmmm, let me think about that. Are there any other offers available?

Rep: Yes, [he described the next offer]

Me: Hmmm, let me think about that. Are there any other offers available?

Rep: Yes, we can refund the annual fee with no spend requirement and give you a 500 point bonus for every billing cycle in which you spend $500 or more, for 16 billing cycles.

I was pretty happy with that last offer, but I continued to ask him about other offers until he ran out of them. The next offers were not as good as the last one described above, so I ultimately accepted that one.

Thanks to this phone call, I can keep my Premier card for free for another year, plus I can earn 500 bonus points each month. If I spend exactly $500 per month on the card, I’ll earn an extra 1 point per dollar over the base earning rate of the card. Base earnings are: 3X dining and entertainment; 2X airfare and hotels; and 1X elsewhere. If I didn’t already earn 5X for dining with my Citi Forward card (a perk which is no longer offered for new applicants), I’d be pretty happy about the idea of earning 4X in that category. As things stand, though, I can do just as well with other cards even with this additional 1X perk, so I’m unlikely to go for this 500 points per month bonus.

Lesson learned

When calling to cancel a card, don’t accept the first retention offer given to you. Instead, ask if they can do more. I had a similar experience in March with Chase where I called to cancel my Ink Bold card. I was first offered $95 to offset the annual fee, but when I asked about other offers, I was told that I could get 20,000 points instead!

More From The Frequent Miler

Greg is the owner, founder, and primary author of the Frequent Miler. He earns millions of points and miles each year, mostly without flying, and dedicates this blog to teaching others how to do the same.

[…] waive your annual fee each year if you call and ask. Last year Citi let me keep my card for free (details in this post), and this year they offered to wave the fee if I spent $4500 on the card in three […]

Comments

Thanks for sharing Greg. Some Chase reps tell you there is no retention bonus but calling back a second or third time and you will get different answers/offers. I’m surprised Citibank has so many different retention bonus offers that they are willing to offer.

I don’t know if it is true, but they implied that the points earned from my Premier card would go away if I cancelled. All of my current points, though, were earned with my Preferred card and my Forward card, so I had no fear of losing Premier earned points.

Please verify before using this info. But it’s my understanding that when you cancel a Citi Thank You card, you have like 30 days after that to use all the Thank You Points you accumulated on the card.

How did you initiate your call with Chase? Did you call and ask to cancel the card or did you ask upfront for any retention bonus? Did they ask any reason why you are cancelling the card? I have my annual fee coming up for Chase Ink bold next month and have to make that call. Thanks

Tip: Always specifically ask for their “best offer”. Retention people are trained to offer the least to get you to accept so unless you are a top spender you are unlikely to get top retention offers without asking.

I’m looking at cancelling my Premier card in June. I’d love to get a retention bonus. But the problem is I got a retention bonus last year. And it’s my understanding you don’t get 2 retention bonuses, year after year. Still holding out hope they surprise me when I call to cancel this June. But can anyone confirm either way?

I just called to cancel my Citi AA since I have the business card and they offered 1k points ea/ month for the next 16 billing cycles after I spend $1k/mo and they’ll waive the $95. Do you think that’s a good deal?

Have you noticed the recent UR mall point reductions, specifically for travel categories? Examples: hotels.com now at 3 pts/dollar (was 5 for at least 3 months, lowest I’ve ever seen was 4), travelocity @ 1 pt/dollar (was 2 for at least a year), sears 3 pts/dollar (was 5). The travel ones were my cash cow because I book a lot of stuff for work. Do you think we’ll see them return or are they lowered for good? It makes me nervous after the United devaluation that they will also make it more difficult to EARN points.

Hope you’ll be doing a write up on UR points soon as I would be curious of your thoughts. Thanks.

Yeah, that’s sad that many of the travel bonuses via the UR mall have gone down. Portal rates do tend to fluctuate over time so I wouldn’t be surprised to see them go back up. That said, it makes sense to use a portal finder like cashbackmonitor to find the best portal for any given merchant.

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